''Cli-fi in the news, cli-fi you can use.'' --
''The Cli-Fi Report'' is a portal for all things cli-fi, from blogs to videos to Wikipedia to Twitter to news links and Facebook Groups. See the portal, the largest Cli-Fi portal on the Internet at cli-fi.net. EMAIL: danbloom@gmail.com

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Documentary on "Climate Refugees" is a deeply powerful film that resonates with those who worry about the future of humankind

Reuters reporter in LA, Mr Bob Tourtellotte reports on Michael Nash's new documentary about climate refugees the world over..... writing in a story headlined "Hollywood goes to the Copenhagen climate summit"...

To hear film director Michael Nash and others talk, bigger issues are national security and the prospect of millions of refugees displaced due to world weather changes. And they are not problems for the future, they are issues today.

Director/producer Nash and producer Justin Hogan went to Copenhagen where their documentary "Climate Refugees" was screened for a private audience of leaders and scientists at a world summit on climate change.

Nash interviews a range of scientists and politicians from U.S. Senator John Kerry to former Congressman Newt Gingrich who view climate change as a security issue if mass displacement leads to conflict among countries competing for resources.

The movie, looking at the human toll of global warming, heads to its world public premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah where climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" debuted in 2006 before going on to critical acclaim, box office success and Oscar glory.

Nash told Reuters he was thrilled to show his movie in Copenhagen to politicians who can pass laws that stem global warming, but the Sundance premiere would boost the film with general audiences.

"It's great to go to Copenhagen, but we also need the people to tell the policymakers what they want," Nash said.

Three years ago -- 2006 -- Nash began reading about mass migrations of people looking for water and food in dry regions of Africa and losing their homes to rising seawater in Bangladesh.

With video camera on shoulders, he and Hogan ventured to such places, including Orissa, India, where the coastal village of Kanhapura has vanished. They spent time on Tuvalu, a South Pacific island that is slowly sinking and where thousands of people will soon be displaced.

In figures released last Tuesday, the International Organisation for Migration estimated climate change would drive a billion people worldwide from their homes in the next four decades. In 2008, 20 million people became homeless in environmental disasters, the IOM said.

"One of the things I learned traveling to some 50 countries is that we better hope man is causing (climate change) because if we are in a natural cycle and it is caused by something we can't control, that would really be alarming," Nash said.